Letters

I agree with Spinoza that creatures react selfishly and emotionally to objects and events ("Mind over matter", May 10). But I'm surprised Antonio Damasio says pain and pleasure are the bedrock of our minds. Civilisations rule by using pleasure to promote good and pain to demote bad. But our basic motives are instincts that have evolved because, when moderated by experience, they enabled survival of a species. Our great problem is to reconcile these natural drives with the demands of a civilisation.

George CA Talbot Watford

It is interesting that you should title the extract from Damasio's book "Mind over Matter". This suggests a misreading of Spinoza, reflecting the dominance in our culture of the Cartesian mind/body separation where the mind has dominion over the body. As Spinoza says, criticising Descartes: "And of course, since there is no common measure between the will and motion, there is also no comparison between the power, or forces, of the mind and those of the body. Consequently, the forces of the body can in no way be determined by the mind" ( Ethics , 162).

There is also the distinction that Damasio makes between emotion and feeling. It is not that emotion is in the body, but that Spinoza, like any good materialist, makes the body the locus of desire. Emotion is jointly to do with mind and body: if the body is affected with passion, so too is the mind.

Terry Price London

Imperial visions

Bob Stuckey's suggestion (Letters, May 10) that the mosaic figure with the chi rho symbol behind its head from Hinton St Mary represents an emperor, rather than Christ, reflects a study I am doing of such images. Another image on a wall painting from a tomb at Poundbury, Dorchester, quite close to Hinton, showed a group of people in purple clothes with a chi rho in the blue sky above their heads: this may refer to the famous incident in 312AD when the Emperor Constantine saw a vision of the chi rho promising him victory (which he achieved) in the forthcoming battle. Constantine was at York when he was first proclaimed emperor in 306AD, and the chi rho symbol remained a popular motif on personal bits and pieces in Britain.

During most of the fourth century, court propaganda was working hard to create a new image in which Christian divinity and the imperial family were merged. Unravelling the mean ings of icons was no simpler then than now.

Susan Pearce University of Leicester

Making history

The conclusion to David Herman's elegy ("Imagine this", May 10) for the arts programming of yesteryear is simply wrong in attributing the Schama-Starkey-Ferguson-led renaissance in history on television to Laurence Rees. If anyone deserves sole credit for making presenter-led history on TV both popular and intellectually respectable, it is surely former Late Show editor Janice Hadlow. While at the BBC, she persuaded Simon Schama to take on the monumental History of Britain and fought to get it made. At Channel 4 she presided over Starkey's trouncing of Ali G in the ratings, and brought Niall Ferguson and a raft of other historian-presenters to the screen. Her brilliant Georgian Season on Channel 4 won audiences and rave reviews. Meanwhile, the jewel in the crown of the BBC's history output is 100 Great Britons.

Tim Kirby Essex

By any other name

By the time Thomas Pynchon's introduction to George Orwell's final masterpiece ("The Road to 1984", May 3) is published in the UK, perhaps somebody can take the trouble to get the title of the novel right. It is Nineteen-Eighty-Four .

John Keenan

Brighton I read Frederic Mullally's letter (May 10) with interest. In his autobiographical novel Clancy , he featured Orwell, among other socialists, as "Herbert Lowell". He named the paper both he ("Frank Clancy") and "Lowell" wrote for as "Forum", whose writers included "Marjorie Robertson". Was she Evelyn Anderson?

Mark Taylor Sydenham

New life for Elliott

In your Diary (May 10) you mention Ebenezer Elliott, commonly known as the Corn Law Rhymer. Although you quote some contemporary words of praise, the only modern critic you cite is Ian Jack, as though his ex cathedra pronouncement - "[his work] is of little account as poetry" - were representative. I am working on a selection which, when published, should help to show that Wordsworth was a truer judge of Elliott's worth than Professor Jack.

Mark Storey University of Birmingham

Peaceful protest

The distinction made between the ISM and Israeli peace groups such as Yesh Gvul by D Brookes is false (Letters, May 3). The ISM frequently works with Israeli peace groups, taking part in marches and other demonstrations across the occupied territories. We are an open organisation, happy to communicate our work and aims: we believe in non-violence and oppose the violent forces of occupation. I am extremely proud of Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall, members of the ISM, and deeply grateful to Susan Sontag for paying tribute to their work for peace.

Nicholas Blincoe London

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